The Wrong Cure

With all of the focus on how terrible a newspaper the Seattle Times is, I temporarily forgot how terrible a newspaper the Tacoma News-Tribune is. To be fair, I’ve seen far more incoherent anti-drug editorials than the one in that link, but it ends up completely missing the larger point behind the corruption within the medical marijuana community. The recent violence against members of that community has intensified a few pre-existing rifts, but it also turns out to be a good example of why moderation within that group is as important as ever if we’re to overcome the outdated stereotypes about marijuana and close the curtain on a truly destructive social policy – and why creating a legal and regulated market remains the smartest solution to the problem.

That editorial is a good springboard for tackling various aspects of those topics, so I’ll take it piece by piece:

Imagine a drug company manufacturing and selling uncontrolled doses of its pharmaceuticals right in the owner’s house.

Marijuana isn’t a pharmaceutical. It’s a naturally growing plant with medicinal properties. It’s also far more benign than the vast majority of drugs produced by drug companies. It’s impossible to overdose on it. And it’s often less addictive than a lot of prescription drugs. That distinction aside, I’m not comfortable with any unregulated markets for potentially addictive substances. Marijuana is certainly unique in that large numbers of people use it recreationally for its psychoactive effects, while others use it medicinally for its various other effects. For either use, there’s a distinct advantage to having a regulatory system set up to ensure that people know exactly what they’re buying and to keep the markets out of residential areas and away from children.

Imagine the owner bringing in a doctor on Saturdays and paying them to pass out prescriptions for his product to lines of customers. Both owner and doctor haul in large sums of cash in this tidy little arrangement.

That’s not terribly hard to imagine. While it doesn’t happen so directly, pharmaceutical companies and doctors often operate together in ways that benefit each other financially. What Steve Sarich was doing with CannaCare isn’t too different than what happens on a far larger scale with our nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies.

The quantity of drugs on hand violates state law, as do the sales themselves. Both the cash and drugs are crime magnets. Burglaries have become routine. The neighbors aren’t happy.

I bet they aren’t happy. I wouldn’t be happy either. But as I mentioned before, the blame for that does not lie solely with Steve Sarich. It also lies with the Governor and the state legislature, who updated the medical marijuana law in a way that continued to keep marijuana dispensaries illegal, and therefore hidden within our neighborhoods. While large amounts of drugs and money in a residential area attract crime, regulated dispensaries have not. In fact, while Los Angeles has seen hundreds of dispensaries pop up around the city, their overall crime rate has plummeted.

Were this some normal, FDA-approved prescription drug, most everyone – especially medical oversight bodies – would be screaming to high heaven.

Who says we’re not? Even Sarich himself would tell you that this isn’t the way it’s supposed to be. He should be operating out in the open, in a regulated commercial environment. And if his doctors are doing anything fraudulent, they and he should be investigated for that. I think it’s pretty obvious to everyone by now that his operation is more than a little shady. I’ve been tempted to ask him directly about whether he really thinks the 18 and 19-year-olds who nearly shot his head off and tried to rob him were really in need of the medical marijuana authorizations he helped them get. It’s probably not worth the effort on my part.

The drug is non-FDA-approved marijuana, though, and the operation is in King County. So lots of people seem cool with the whole thing. Attach the word “medical” to “marijuana,” and it’s pure humanitarianism.

Personally, I still think that King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg deserves a lot of kudos for how he’s handled the medical marijuana issue. And unfortunately, it ends up being people like Steve Sarich who undermine those efforts in the end. There are a number of people in this state who have a legitimate need for marijuana as medicine, but whenever people without medical needs use that excuse to gain access to an easier, safer, and often cheaper supply of marijuana, it clouds that fact for those who don’t follow this issue closely. Unfortunately, the Tacoma News-Tribune editorial board appears to be in the category of “those who don’t follow this issue closely”.

This particular situation hit the news two weeks ago when Steve Sarich, a marijuana champion who grows and sells marijuana out of a Kirkland house, fought off armed robbers (good for him) who were after the cash sitting around at his place. Sarich said it was his eighth home invasion since May.

At the top of this post, I alluded to the rift in the medical marijuana community. The rift exists because of what I just mentioned in the paragraph above. When prominent medical marijuana advocates do things that are obviously outside of the spirit of what the voters approved in 1998, it plays into all of the arguments that law enforcement rely on to keep marijuana prohibition alive. When teenage armed robbers have medical marijuana authorizations, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that the public is less trustful of the next thing that comes out of the mouth of a medical marijuana advocate. This isn’t any different than the dynamic between moderation and extremism that exists within any political movement, but drug law reformers have typically (and unfairly) been at a disadvantage for years in demonstrating that removing prohibitions on drug use is actually the moderate solution to the problem of drug abuse. Within an environment like that, it can be easy to resort to extremism yourself, but all that does is play into the false frames that exist. Sarich falls into this trap all the time, and to make it even worse, he’s constantly accusing nearly everyone else in the medical marijuana movement of trying to undermine patients whenever they strive for more moderate positions.

Sarich – who has a doctor’s authorization to use pot as medicine – says he’s no drug dealer. But he’s certainly an entrepreneur.

Sure, and there’s nothing wrong with being an entrepreneur. Despite his faults, I’d still rather have the money being spent on marijuana (medicinal or not) going to someone like Sarich than going to criminal gangs from Mexico. Within every medical marijuana law in the country, there are going to be entrepreneurial types who are willing to bend and stretch the law to allow for non-medical users to obtain that authorization. And there will always be a doctor or two willing to go along. Hell, it even happened during alcohol prohibition, even though – unlike marijuana – medical organizations no longer considered alcohol to have any medicinal properties. The answer at that time wasn’t to prosecute more people, it was to re-establish legal and regulated markets for the recreational use of that drug.

After the attempted robbery, police say they found $10,712 in cash in his safe and what looked like records of $14,653 worth of sales between March 1 and 5. Also, 116 medium and large-sized marijuana plants and 259 starter plants in the house, plus a load of marijuana products and a small arsenal of guns.

Anyone can do the math to figure out that Sarich was sitting on a profitable enterprise. In states where dispensaries are already legal, those who run them are making good money. In the absence of legal dispensaries though, that money goes to criminal organizations – often based in Mexico – which continues to fuel the massive amount of crime and violence down there.

State law allows a medical marijuana patient a maximum of 15 plants; Sarich’s live-in girlfriend also has an authorization, so their combined max would be 30.

Sarich – who was caught with 1,554 plants in 2007 – readily admits he’s been providing the drug to numerous users. Police say he sells it to customers who pay up to $200 to attend his Saturday seminars, where his hired doctor hands out authorizations to use marijuana as medicine.

Steve Chapman does an excellent job here of summing up the problem of Mexican crime stemming from prohibition. The lesson that we should have learned by now is that if you prohibit folks like Steve Sarich from continuing to run his operation, it may feel like you’re accomplishing something, but in reality, the people who would have bought his product are just going to find supply elsewhere. And whenever the enforcement of those laws gets more and more aggressive, the numbers of people willing to take that risk to supply others dwindles accordingly. What we have now, after several decades of an aggressive nationwide war on the marijuana trade, is that it’s overwhelmingly controlled by very dangerous people who aren’t afraid to break the law. The fact that Sarich was cynically getting people medical marijuana authorizations and growing a few hundred extra plants to sell to them is a rounding error in that larger equation.

Let’s cut through the haze: Dispensaries and shill doctors are not what Washingtonians approved when they legalized medical marijuana – with strict limits – at the polls in 1998. That year’s Initiative 692 explicitly forbade sales, limited quantities and allowed a caregiver to provide marijuana to a patient – but only one patient, not dozens and not hundreds.

That’s correct, but the reason that there was an effort to rework the law in the legislature in 2007 was because of those shortcomings in the voter-approved law. Without legal ways to distribute the medicine, patients (many of whom are disabled) were forced to grow plants themselves or had to find someone they knew and trusted who could do it for them. This left a large number of patients with only a theoretical way to use the law without relying on the criminal black market. No one is happy about the shill doctors and the 18-year-old hoodlums with medical marijuana cards. But that’s a bigger problem when you force the distribution underground. If you bring it out of the shadows, people less shady than Steve Sarich will get involved. But it’s up to the state legislature to act upon that. It’s already fully legal in Colorado, Rhode Island, New Mexico, and California. It should be made legal here too.

Weeds must be pulled before they go to seed. Official tolerance of “medical” grow operations insults the voters, subverts the law, fosters de facto drug houses and invites violence in the bargain. Quasi-commercial marijuana dispensaries are a disease; the cure is prosecution.

No, prosecution is by far the worst response to this situation. All that would do is hand more of the local market for marijuana back to people who are less afraid of law enforcement. The last thing we need to be doing is giving more money to organized gangs. We have enough gang violence already.

There’s always a temptation to believe that news outlets like the News-Tribune know this and cynically give bad advice in order to keep law enforcement budgets fat, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think they’re just stuck in a mentality that has far too long gone unquestioned in our society. The idea that you could prosecute your way to success in the drug war is pure folly. It has left us with ailing budgets, overcrowded prisons, and far too many situations where law enforcement isn’t protecting us, but waging war on us.

Believing that adult possession of a psychoactive and medicinal plant constitutes a crime is the disease. Legalization and regulation is the cure.

While, like you I support legalization, I think you hurt your argument by dismissing this editorial. It seems to me that the Tacoma NT points are far better reasoned than the usual Blethen Blather.

The Tribune makes good points and your counter arguments are mostly good too. Personally, I like the proposed California law better. Legalize and regulate MJ gets rid of the MM Trojan Horse facade. If people need THC, let them buy it openly or sell THC in forms that do not require inhalation of the other components in MJ. on a few specific points you sound more like Blethen than you might like:

Marijuana is not a “Pharmaceutical” .. This is a meaningless comment. Yes MJ is a plant. But it is used as a delivery vehicle for THC and that is certainly a drug, pharmaceutical, whatever.

As you know I think MJ should be legalized and regulated, but the efforts by the MM crowd to portray the stuff as a miracle drug hurt your credibility.

The medical community sees no therapeutic value in alcohol This is absurd. Many physicians recommend alcohol as a mild relaxant or sedative.

The comment also plays badly with your comment about MJ nor being a pharmaceutical. MJ is a plant that contains THC, a physiologically active molecule .. a “drug”. Jamesons’s is a bottle that contains alcohol.

I also think that the editorial makes a very good point against the effort to liberalize the laws for “medical” marijuana. As the Trib says,

“Let’s cut through the haze: Dispensaries and shill doctors are not what Washingtonians approved when they legalized medical marijuana – with strict limits – at the polls in 1998.”

. The proposed law would make abuses like Sarich’s Pottery more likely by broadening the kinds of people able to “prescribe” MM.

Why can I buy 12 bottles of Vodka a day and not one joint of marijuana? There is no scientific rational reason. It’s just magic and superstition.

Just think how much LESS domestic violence we’d have if we REPLACED cheap beer and Jack with pot.

If people are worried about too MANY drugs in the free market, then just replace alcohol with pot. You’ll save untold BILLIONS in health costs, traffic deaths, domestic violence, etc. Can pot (smoke) cause issues? Sure, but 1/10 of the problems alcohol causes. Pot makes you mellow and drive at 40mph. Alcohol fuels anger (re: bar fights) and makes you drive fast & stupid. BOTH have effects on your body, one is just clearly better/safer.

Say…why aren’t the Republicans on here FOR legal pot? Shouldn’t this be a FREE MARKET solution? The Tea Baggers and right Republicans don’t even WANT a Federal government right? So why do they want a Federal government telling me WHICH intoxicants I can use? Is THAT in the Constitution Mr. Strict Constructionist? If my state (and Republicans are ALL for states rights…right?) wants legal marijuana, or my county or town does…why to Republicans back a Federal government drug policy OVER local/state policy?

I do enjoy HA’s truth squading of the Seattle Times, but thanks Lee for noting that the second largest daily paper in the region is just as looney. There was a time when the TNT was a bit more to the center on issues than the Times, but the current newspaper industry death spiral has resulted in the more moderate voices retiring and/or being forced out. It leaves a fairly intolerant bunch in charge of the editorial opinion.

@2Marijuana is not a “Pharmaceutical” .. This is a meaningless comment. Yes MJ is a plant. But it is used as a delivery vehicle for THC and that is certainly a drug, pharmaceutical, whatever.

Pharmaceuticals have tended to be defined as manufactured drugs, not ones that occur naturally in nature.

MJ is a plant that contains THC, a physiologically active molecule .. a “drug”. Jamesons’s is a bottle that contains alcohol.

And alcohol is a physiologically active molecule as well.

The proposed law would make abuses like Sarich’s Pottery more likely by broadening the kinds of people able to “prescribe” MM.

This is only part of the story, but I’ve never explained why at the front of HA, so I’ll explain it here. By making doctors the only gatekeepers to this law, it has enabled folks like Sarich to make himself more of a gatekeeper as well. There are more ways that the federal government can come down on a doctor for recommending medicinal marijuana use than they can on nurse practitioners or physicians assistants.

Sarich makes a lot of money from his arrangements because people don’t know where to go to get an authorization. When Gregoire signs this bill today, it certainly opens up the possibility that naturopaths and others will recommend it to people who don’t have a real medical need, but as I’ve pointed out numerous times before, those people are going to use marijuana either way. It changes little for the people who are abusing the law, since those folks can still be arrested, and judges have shown that they can overrule the medical recommendation based upon the wording of the medical marijuana law.

But what it does is that it further erodes the kind of dependency that the legitimate medical marijuana users (folks with serious pain, disabilities, cancer, etc, but who live in parts of the state where doctors are afraid to recommend) have for people like Sarich. Of course, that dependency isn’t fully eroded until dispensaries exist.

Interestingly, as this bill was getting close to passing through the state legislature, Sarich began fiercely opposing it once an amendment was offered to reduce fraud. Privately, I pressed folks to explain why and never got a satisfactory answer. Some people thought that Sarich was just finding a way to oppose this law, because he saw that it would enable patients to be less dependent on him.

Thanks for the reasonable comment. You have certainly put some effort into understanding this issue far more than you used to, and I appreciate that.

In an effort to ensure that medical marijuana patients are easy pickings for armed thugs, the King County Sheriff blocks gun purchases by medical marijuana patients. By presuming their possession and use unlawful (without any investigation of facts), the Sheriff’s Office fails their background checks. This policy makes me wonder whether a medical authorization has impacts beyond being unable to buy a gun, such as, do they also fail these legal users on background checks for security clearances or employment?

Thanks Lee! Great article! Can you get this posted on the newspaper’s comments or as an op-ed? More people need to see it!

And SJ, you are wrong — it is a miracle plant! Tell me one other plant that can be used to make any product that a tree, crude oil, chemicals used in plastics, cotton or coal can make as well as be used for nutritious food for livestock and humans (perfect ratio of Omega 3 and 6) and more medicinal uses than any pharmaceutical.

THC is just one of the many components of the plant — the whole plant used together is far superior. The gov’t and Big Pharma knew decades ago that Cannabis can cure cancer and since then have made trillions on chemo, radiation, surgery, etc by demonizing this plant. Watch “Run from the Cure” (free online) for just one example.

You sound like a fundie talking baout Manna. Or maybe like Beck talking about anything.

Tell me one other plant that can be used to make any product that a tree, crude oil, chemicals used in plastics, cotton or coal can make as well as be used for nutritious food for livestock and humans (perfect ratio of Omega 3 and 6) and more medicinal uses than any pharmaceutical.

corn, wood pulp, algae, tobacco, soy ????

As for the perfect ratio of omega 3 .. what is the “perfect ratio”

THC is just one of the many components of the plant — the whole plant used together is far superior.

superior to what?

The gov’t and Big Pharma knew decades ago that Cannabis can cure cancer

YOU epitomize here what is wrong with marijuana evangelism. Cancer is a very serious disease and patients who have it desaerve REAL treatment. The miracles I have seen in my own 68 years are that several formally incureable cancers can now be cured while more and more we can control others.

There is no evidence MJ can cure cancer.

and since then (pharma, gvmnt) have made trillions on chemo, radiation, surgery, etc by demonizing this plant.

Government has made trillions? Quick check here .. are you working with Glen Beck?

As I said, I would much prefer simple legalization to the facade of medical marijuana.

If it is really true that Sanich and his ilk are a problem, then we could solve that by mandating the production of THC in an effective medical form. Certainly that would cost a lot less than the policing costs etc associated with misuse of MM.

Personally, since I think inhalation of anything with benzpyrene is a bad idea, I am attracted to the K2 idea. Isn’t K2 legal in WA now? If so, an end run around the MJ issue might be to propose to regulate and sell K2 in the State Liquor stores.

As for alcohol is as “natural” as THC. Marijuana is a vegicle for its contents, including THC just as beer or Beam are vehicles for CH2OH.

SJ, You are so wrong! Corn is one of the worst plants for any of those things! None of those plants are even close! Corn is terrible–very little nutritional value, and the mass growing of it where hemp used to be the #1 crop is destroying the Mississippi River Valley and the Gulf of Mexico with the fertilizers (run-off) they must use. Same with Soybeans. Tobacco? You must be joking!

An acre of hemp grown in one season can make more and better quality paper then an acre of trees that takes 20 -30 yrs to grow. There are plenty of good websites for this info: hemp.org, pheonistears.ca, hempmuseum.org, jackherer.com, votehemp.com and many more.

I’m sorry you don’t seem to like what I have to say, but educate yourself — I didn’t make any of this up! Also, look up Dr Tashkin for lung studies — very interesting stuff. Apparently there is some component in the plant that protects the lungs from the harmful substances in smoke.

K2 is much worse than real cannabis, as is the case with so many synthetic products — hard to beat mother nature!

As for gov’t making money, I don’t have time to go into all the details (have to get back to Sensible Washington business) but for the last 40 yrs or so the FDA and the Dept of Ag and many other posts, as well as the congress and senate have been revolving doors for highly paid execs with the businesses they are supposed to monitor. They have worked in concert (govt and industry) to maximize profit at the expense of health and environment. For instance, this excerpt from http://www.mercola.com/article.....angers.htm

“The FDA and the manufacturers of aspartame have had a revolving door of employment for many years. In addition to the FDA Commissioner and two US Attorneys leaving to take positions with companies connected with G.D. Searle, four other FDA officials connected with the approval of aspartame took positions connected with the NutraSweet industry between 1979 and 1982 including the Deputy FDA Commissioner, the Special Assistant to the FDA Commissioner, the Associate Director of the Bureau of Foods and Toxicology and the Attorney involved with the Public Board of Inquiry.(24)

It is important to realize that this type of revolving-door activity has been going on for decades. The Townsend Letter for Doctors (11/92) reported on a study revealing that 37 of 49 top FDA officials who left the FDA took positions with companies they had regulated. They also reported that over 150 FDA officials owned stock in drug companies they were assigned to manage. Many organizations and universities receive large sums of money from companies connected to the NutraSweet Association, a group of companies promoting the use of aspartame. In January 1993, the American Dietetic Association received a US$75,000 grant from the NutraSweet Company. The American Dietetic Association has stated that the NutraSweet Company writes their “Facts” sheets.(25)” Also, Donald Rumsfeld was CEO of GD Searle at the time. The company is now part of Monsanto. I hope you read the whole article.

Please stop spreading false-hoods out of ignorance and read up at some of the links I provided. I am very serious about this — my mom died of cancer so I don’t take it lightly. What evidence do you have that I’m wrong?

Corn is terrible–very little nutritional value, and the mass growing of it where hemp used to be the #1 crop is destroying the Mississippi River Valley and the Gulf of Mexico with the fertilizers (run-off) they must use. Same with Soybeans. Tobacco? You must be joking!

I am not an agronomist but neither (I suspect) are you. Tobacco can and has, by the way, been used to make a number of things other than what gets smoked .. including proteins. Soy is used to make HUGE numbers of things. I suspect pig and cattle feeders wold not agree with you on the nutritional value of corn.

As for cellulose to manufacture paper, there are a number of plants besides trees being used for that purpose.

What reason would there be for commercial interest not to grow hemp if it were as profitable as you say?

Also, look up Dr Tashkin for lung studies — very interesting stuff. Apparently there is some component in the plant that protects the lungs from the harmful substances in smoke.

I have read the Tashkin studies. They are interesting but they do not prove that something in MJ is anticancer. No one should inhale benzpyrene without better evidence than this. You included.

I can recommend a good book on stats if you want one.

K2 is much worse than real cannabis, as is the case with so many synthetic products — hard to beat mother nature!

There is NO such evidence. What there is evidence that unregulated sales of a K2 product, as applied to something one can smoke, have something else in them .. likely an amphetamine. This is an excellent argument AGAINST the unregulated sale of MJ as well.

As for gov’t making money…the FDA and the Dept of Ag and many other posts, as well as the congress and senate have been revolving doors for highly paid execs with the businesses they are supposed to monitor.

I am sure there is logic in this statement but I can not see what it is. By this logic you should join the teabaggers and disband the IRS, the military, the forest service, …..

“Nutrasweet” … “Monsanto” … “FDA”…Searle …

Again, this is impossible to follow .. rather like Beck’s blackboard exercises. As for nutrasweet, I have not read all the literature but have no reason to believe it is a health problem. If you know of a real paper that proves something, send it to me.

Please stop spreading false-hoods out of ignorance

Back at you. I am sorry your Mom died of cancer, mine did too .. from a cancer almost certianly caused by smoking. My sister just had a stroke from the same cause.

What evidence do you have that I’m wrong?

About what?

If the issue that bothers you is my concern with inhalation of MJ smoke, there are plenty of places you can read about aromatic hydrocarbons causing cancer.

As for medical marijuana vs legalization, I think MM is a bad idea because of the kind of posts Lee often makes here about “terminal” or otherwise seriously ill people. I have no objection to sick people getting some relief from any source and MJ can help with some things. OTOH, if we somehow illegalized it for real, I do not think this wold create any greater gap in healthcare than illegalizing chiropractic, naturopathy, colonics, or most of the stuff they sell in health food stores.

@10Personally, since I think inhalation of anything with benzpyrene is a bad idea, I am attracted to the K2 idea. Isn’t K2 legal in WA now? If so, an end run around the MJ issue might be to propose to regulate and sell K2 in the State Liquor stores.

K2 is legal, but Mary is correct. If you’re worried about potential side-effects, the marijuana plant itself, however you choose to ingest it, will be safer.

As for alcohol is as “natural” as THC. Marijuana is a vegicle for its contents, including THC just as beer or Beam are vehicles for CH2OH.

Correct, but that’s the opposite of what you were saying above. Maybe you just managed to confuse yourself, but you may want to take a look at your earlier comment and figure out what you’re really trying to say.

I believe in legalizing and regulating, for medicinal, recreational,and industrial uses. If you do too, then regardless of our disagreements we need to work together to make it happen! Join us at sensiblewashington.org email me at sensiblesouthkingcounty@gmail.com and I will make sure you get petitions, instructions, guidance and support.

As long as there are millions of people using recreationally, medical mj will always be used by some to provide the supply. There are many who use medicinally but either don’t have a condition on their state’s list or live in a state with no med mj and that is really sad.

Put on your learning cap and prepare to get schooled this Thursday as we present our highly requested class on the Biochemistry of Cannabinoid Medicine with resident genius Sunil Aggarwal, PhD, MD-C. The class is open to the public and costs $20.

Cannabis contains myriad cannabinoids, THC is not the only one with medicinal properties. We have yet to even identify all the cannabinoids within cannabis.

Marinol which is only THC, doesn’t do anything but reduce my nausea, hence my doctor recommends cannabis for its pain relief and anti-spasticity properties. On top of that, it relieves my nausea better than marinol and more quickly than marinol as well.

I personally don’t ever smoke cannabis, I prefer to combine a low dose of edible with vaporization. You can decarboxylate without combustion!

1. other cannabinoids .. true enough but there is no evidence they add to the purported clinical effects of THC.

There are people working in this since if such effects exist, it would be possible to make more effective molecules.

2, Inhalation w/o combustion

I think this is a good idea but am a bit worried since chewing tobacco is very carcinogens w/o inhalation. The problem may be the concentrations of carcinogens delivered local by tobacco, presumably not so with inhaled non combusted tobacco or MJ.

3. Corn and Soy are both used as primary sources of molecules in organic synthesis. I do not know but would hazard a guess that molecules derived from abundant materials like this show up in many drugs. I am not sure but I believe the first form of the statins, a molecule isolated in Japan, was isolated from soy. A variety of plants are used in this way to make complex drugs because the plant compound is often easier to isolate than synthesis.

K2 is legal, but Mary is correct. If you’re worried about potential side-effects, the marijuana plant itself, however you choose to ingest it, will be safer.

I don’t think so.

K2 or any other pure cannabinoid is a lot easier to define and control than any plant. look at the crap cig companies added to their natural product!

Presumably whatever is being used to adulterate K2 could also be used to adulterate MJ. In fact, when MJ does inevitably become legal, I suspect there will have to be strict controls on the plants and the processing to be sure folks do not get the wrong stuff.

One good reason for legalization.

Correct, but that’s the opposite of what you were saying above.

Not sure what you are referring to. My point is that alcohol is a chemical. So is THC.

When people say “alcohol” vs MJ they mean booze vs MJ. You actually can not buy pure alcohol in the US w/o a prescription.

To go one step further some forms of booze ARE harmful becauseof componentgs other than ethanol. There have been problems with Anise and with ‘shine. I also wonder about some of the malt scotches that have been exposed to peat. Similarly I wonder about the safety of retsina and punt e mes.

To me, it would be good if we treated cannabinoids as we do CH2OH. We make it pretty hard for anyone other than a commercial, regulated entity t prepare CH2OH containing products. Some home brew survives but most folks prefer the commercial brands. It would make great sense to be able to buy an ephemere based with THC at the Dilletante or perhaps something like Kahlua made with K2? I also suspect that art of the devotion to weed is akin to thumb or tit sucking. I suspect a perfectly innocuous oral delivery form could be made pretty easily.

Actually, I wonder why noone has tried to sell a legal form of chocolate laced with K2?

SJ said, “there is no evidence they add to the purported clinical effects of THC.”

Ok, PLEASE, STOP SPREADING MISINFORMATION. For the love of science!

“Leweke et al. performed a double blind, 4 week, explorative controlled clinical trial to compare the effects of purified cannabidiol and the atypical antipsychotic amisulpride on improving the symptoms of schizophrenia in 42 patients with acute paranoid schizophrenia. ‘Both treatments were associated with a significant decrease of psychotic symptoms after 2 and 4 weeks as assessed by BPRS and PANSS. However, there was no statistical difference between both treatment groups. In contrast, cannabidiol induced significantly less side effects (EPS, increase in prolactin, weight gain) when compared to amisulpride.”

“Cannabidiol has also been shown to inhibit cancer cell growth with low potency in non-cancer cells. Although the inhibitory mechanism is not yet fully understood, Ligresti et al. suggest that “cannabidiol exerts its effects on these cells through a combination of mechanisms that include either direct or indirect activation of CB2 and TRPV1 receptors, and induction of oxidative stress, all contributing to induce apoptosis.”[19] In November 2007, researchers at the California Pacific Medical Center reported that CBD shows promise for controlling the spread of metastatic breast cancer. In vitro CBD downregulates the activity of the gene ID1 which is responsible for tumor metastasis”

That’s all the homework I am doing on your behalf. Everything in my first post is accurate so I won’t repeat what I said.

SJ: If you DON’T KNOW WTF YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT…STOP BEING THE LOUDEST PERSON IN THE ROOM.

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